The present invention relates to an infant care apparatus and, more particularly, to an infant warming apparatus having a customized humidification control system that effectively weans the infant away from reliance upon the infant care apparatus
It is quite common in the care of infants to provide a controlled atmosphere within which the infant is contained for the wellbeing of that infant. A typical infant incubator is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,824 of Koch et al.
As such, there is an infant compartment for the infant where the environment is carefully controlled so as to provide a heated atmosphere to the infant and generally will also include some control of the humidity within that infant compartment. In general, high humidity environments, greater than 80% Relative Humidity (RH) are typically used to maintain skin integrity, reduce insensible water loss and assist in maintaining the body temperature of very low birth weight infants. Such high humidity environments are normally maintained by a servo-controlled feedback loop within the infant compartment where the user simply inputs a desired temperature and humidity and there is a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor located within the infant compartment that provides a feedback signal to the controller that establishes the temperature and humidity inputted by the user.
Once set, therefore, a heating system and a humidification system maintain the user set values for temperature and relative humidity and will maintain those values without variation unless the user sets a new value for the temperature of relative humidity or the system responds to a sensed infant temperature to make an appropriate adjustment in the heating to offset a change in the infant's temperature, that is, the incubator may, in one mode of control, automatically increase the temperature within the infant compartment by increasing the power to the convective heater in response to a reduction of the infant's temperature.
As the infant matures, however, it requires lower levels of humidity and lower set temperatures to maintain its body temperature. A nurse will, from time to time, make individual challenges to the infant's self-control of thermal regulation by reducing either the humidity or temperature or both. This “weaning trial” is a manual action with manual observation of the infant's success at maintaining its body temperature during the challenge. Over successive weaning trials, the infant will eventually be moved from a temperature regulated environment to an open bassinet.
In the control of humidity, it is often advantageous to be able to vary the humidity in accordance with the needs of the infant and after an assessment by an attending caregiver. That control or variation of the humidity level within the infant compartment may also be under the control of a preprogrammed protocol that is established by the manufacturer of the incubator such that the humidity is automatically varied i.e. reduced in accordance with some pre-established program.
As an example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,728 of Gatts, there is incorporated into the apparatus, a preset program that initially provides a relatively high humidity and then gradually lowers the humidity so as to wean the infant away from the humidified atmosphere so that, eventually, the controlled humidity approaches that of the external ambient when the infant is ready to be taken off of the incubator.
With the Gatts system however, there is no control by the user, that is, the weaning process is carried out entirely by a program that is loaded into the system by the manufacturer. Thus, the Gatts system is not effective where the user wants to establish and use its own program for the automated control of humidity within the infant compartment. In addition, there is no system by which the user can verify that the Gatts control of humidification is operating properly and in accordance with the manufacturers program.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a humidification control system that provides an automatic control of humidity within an infant compartment that would allow an input by a user so that the control of the humidity is customized in accordance with the desires of the user. In addition it would be advantageous to have a humidification control system that could provide an alert to the user in the event the infant is not well tolerating an automatic change in the humidity to allow the user to make an appropriate correction in the level of humidity to avoid stressing the infant.